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Saving transparent CMYK for printing

Community Beginner ,
Feb 12, 2018 Feb 12, 2018

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What is the process for saving a CMYK image with transparency at print quality, I can't save as png.. what do I do.

Everything makes the background white.

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Participant ,
Feb 12, 2018 Feb 12, 2018

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Why don't you just stick with the native PSD format?

PSD, PDF or TIFF seem like more appropriate file formats. Explaining a little more about your end goals might give us more hints as to the best solution for you.

Picture-1.png

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Community Beginner ,
Feb 12, 2018 Feb 12, 2018

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Ultimately I need to be able to upload to Vistaprint and their formats don't include PSD.

.tiff removed the transparency, and so did PDF, unless there is a step in saving to .tiff or PDF I don't know about. But both made it like a jpg.. the transparent area turns white.

I don't know where that window you have, appears in the saving process, when I choose to save as a tiff there is no transparency box to tick for me. I am using the latest photoshop.

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Participant ,
Feb 12, 2018 Feb 12, 2018

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when you choose PDF select

High Quality Print

Creates PDFs for quality printing on desktop printers and proofing devices. This preset uses PDF 1.4, downsamples color and grayscale images to 300 ppi and monochrome images to 1200 ppi, embeds subsets of all fonts, leaves color unchanged, and does not flatten transparency (for file types capable of transparency). These PDFs can be opened in Acrobat 5.0 and Acrobat Reader 5.0 and later. In InDesign, this preset also creates tagged PDFs.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 12, 2018 Feb 12, 2018

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The High Quaiity Print preset assumes you‘re working in RGB color mode and therefore will use the printer‘s software to convert to CMYK or CMYK + for high-end inkjet printers.

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New Here ,
Mar 15, 2021 Mar 15, 2021

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So I'm hopping in on this conversation several years after the original post. I need to make a PSD file transparent to use for printing on a white toner printer. The output is on a special paper that I use to press the design on a T-shirt. The white toner is important to use because it gives it a white base to print on any color shirt. However, I don't want the white square to print, hence the need for a transparent PSD file. Does anyone have any help with that? I've tried indexing the colors, etc. When I look at the PSD file, it's transparent. But the white background still prints. But this is on just ONE design, not all of them.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 13, 2018 Feb 13, 2018

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png is good for web not print.

if you are placing this into something like Indesign or Illustrator than Photoshop PSD works great.

For output to printers, consider the PDF/x-1a or x-4 standards which are ISO standards.

HTH

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LEGEND ,
Feb 13, 2018 Feb 13, 2018

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PDF will preserve on/off transparency. Exactly what test do you do which shows otherwise? Are you looking to preserve semi transparency and if so, why?

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Participant ,
Apr 03, 2019 Apr 03, 2019

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You can save as a transparent TIFF file from Photoshop. Make sure that Save Transparency is checked (lower left corner in Photoshop CC 2017).

The advantage over PSD is that you can use LZW compression for TIFF files, consuming less disk space.

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